I share my computer with the rest of my family and there are many partitions in the HDD. I created sda20 for LMDE / and sda21 for LMDE /home and I would like to install Grub in sda20. However during the installation process when I reached the page for the Grub installation, I am presented with /dev/sda and no other choice.

Is there any way around this or has my DVD been wrongly burnt? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

searcher1 wrote:I share my computer with the rest of my family and there are many partitions in the HDD. I created sda20 for LMDE / and sda21 for LMDE /home and I would like to install Grub in sda20. However during the installation process when I reached the page for the Grub installation, I am presented with /dev/sda and no other choice.

Is there any way around this or has my DVD been wrongly burnt? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

GRUB(the first stage any way) is installed in the Master Boot Record which located at the very beginning of your hard drive. /dev/sda is the correct place to install it if you want to boot an OS that resides any where on your sda hard drive. You are not presented with any other choices because I assume you only have one physical hard drive.

In it's current incarnation there is no way to specify where grub will be installed except in the Master Boot Record of your available drives. Curiously, after installation and upon the first update an new grub will be downloaded and as part of the installation of the new grub you will again be asked where you want to install Grub. At that point you can specify that you want it to be installed in /sda20. It's a little late at that point because the damage has already been done.

Hopefully a LMDE 2.0 will be released in the future that will have this feature already included in the initial installer.

Please add a [SOLVED] at the end of your original subject header if your question has been answered and solved.

Yes, you should be able to opt not to install Grub; however, do remember to run "sudo update-grub" in the Linux distro from which you installed Grub into the MBR, otherwise you won't see LMDE in your Grub menu during bootup.

JasonLG wrote:GRUB(the first stage any way) is installed in the Master Boot Record which located at the very beginning of your hard drive. /dev/sda is the correct place to install it if you want to boot an OS that resides any where on your sda hard drive. You are not presented with any other choices because I assume you only have one physical hard drive.

No, Grub does not have to be installed in the MBR. You could be using LILO, GAG, or even Windows' own boot manager...for the latter two, you would then have to chainload to Grub in order to boot Linux. Point is, something has to be installed into the MBR, but it certainly doesn't have to be Grub. Granted, most people are going to be using Grub and have it installed in the MBR, but it's up to the individual user to decide.

vincent wrote:Yes, you should be able to opt not to install Grub; however, do remember to run "sudo update-grub" in the Linux distro from which you installed Grub into the MBR, otherwise you won't see LMDE in your Grub menu during bootup.

JasonLG wrote:GRUB(the first stage any way) is installed in the Master Boot Record which located at the very beginning of your hard drive. /dev/sda is the correct place to install it if you want to boot an OS that resides any where on your sda hard drive. You are not presented with any other choices because I assume you only have one physical hard drive.

No, Grub does not have to be installed in the MBR. You could be using LILO, GAG, or even Windows' own boot manager...for the latter two, you would then have to chainload to Grub in order to boot Linux. Point is, something has to be installed into the MBR, but it certainly doesn't have to be Grub. Granted, most people are going to be using Grub and have it installed in the MBR, but it's up to the individual user to decide.

I realize that other bootloaders can be used but the OP wasn't asking about that. The question was in LMDE by default is there a way to place grub on sda20 at install time, and the answer is no just like I explained.

"I see" said the blind man to the deaf man who stuck his wooden leg out the window to check the weather.